<me> You understand why you get that feeling and why it starts to get, erm, erect?
<son> Yeah, yeah, jeez, Dad, I know all that! Do we have to talk about this now?
<me> Yes. We do. Your mum told me to talk to you. Right, and you know what, er, condoms are … and why you need to use them and whe –
<son> Yes, yes, yes. Dad, please. Honest, I know all about using johnnies.
<me> And you know that they come in different, erm, err … strengths, depending on the type of sex you’re having?
<son> Dad, no! Please!!! Really! Stop. I want to go out.
<me> Out? You’ve only just come home. Where are you going?
<son> Anywhere! Back to school – to the dentist. Anywhere but here!
<me> OK … phew.
That’s a pretty typical example of what happens when I attempt to broach “the chat” with my teenage son. It’s a conversation we’ve been having on and off (mainly off) for months and, as I’ve discovered, it’s something that parents dread almost as much as their kids.
It wasn’t always this way. As many parents will tell you, the biology section of “the chat” starts way before puberty kicks in. It begins at primary school age, when your child unashamedly asks questions such as: “Why do I have a [insert genitalia]?” or “Why do you have hair down there?” At that age they’re wonderfully unselfconscious, and you find yourself developing your “awkward conversation” strategy by stealth. For a while, it works. I once had to explain to my inquisitive (then) five-year-old son where babies come from – while on a packed bus. I had to tell him four times because each time he’d ask me, ever more incredulously, to explain it again. His insistence on me retelling the facts eventually had me questioning myself. Had I really got the whole reproduction thing correct? Thankfully, the woman beside us gave me a confirming nod and thumbs up.
But it’s when kids reach the teenage years, or thereabouts – the point when they can actually create another life – that we parents are obliged to give them a theory refresher course. And that’s when it gets tricky.
Sure enough, their school will probably have covered it to some degree. But don’t rely on a double-period of PSHE, or whatever “life skills” lessons are called these days, to cover all the bases. In my son’s case, all the boys in his class watched a film that was followed up by a giggle-filled question-and-answer session led by a male year 6 teacher who was so fresh out of university that I’m pretty sure his own dad’s “chat” was still ringing in his ears.
That lesson focused on the physical differences between boys and girls without touching on, well, touching, for one thing. It turned out that masturbation, periods, foreplay and the aforementioned “johnnies” (yep, teenagers still call condoms that), along with unwanted pregnancies, gay sex and STDs weren’t covered at all in the class. So I had my work cut out. Aside from the “birth on the bus” chat, up until this point, most of our father-son conversations had revolved around school, food, stuff-that-pisses-Mum-off and Star Wars. STDs were going to be a challenge.
Where possible, I’ve attempted to bring up the topic of S-E-X in as casual and low-key a way as possible, often via a topical, cultural hook. Sometimes it’s worked like a charm, like the time I took the opportunity to talk to him about consent, after a courtroom drama we were both watching featured a sexual assault. Other times, my efforts haven’t been quite so smooth. I still kick myself for trying to discuss a magazine article about wet dreams over the dinner table.
Another tip I picked up during the course of writing my parenting book was that boys tend to think better when they’re active and moving. I thought I’d give this a shot, since forcing my son to sit down and listen to me talk for any length of time is seen as an interrogation. So now I try to have “the chat” in the car, or when we’re walking together. I follow a line of suggesting what he might know with an open-ended question and gauging, from his response, what he still needs to know. For example: “So, why is it you should wear a condom?”
On the occasions when he doesn’t respond by plugging his headphones into his ears or asking me to stop the car immediately, what I do manage to discover is that he has done his homework. Or rather, he hasn’t done his homework but instead spends his after-school hours talking to his mates about sex – that, or he’s gleaning more from the TV and internet than I could ever come up with. Basically, he’s learning about sex the way most kids have always done: through his peers.
As for me, what I’ve learned is that you shouldn’t wait to have one big talk. Instead, having lots of little chats about sex makes the experience much less intense and easier to handle – for you and them. It also helps to reassure them that what they’re experiencing is perfectly normal, that it’s just part of growing up and that you, their parent, went through it all too. Yeah, they really enjoy it when you plant that image in their head.
Covering sex, love and everything in between – watch Sex Education on Netflix. Available on the NOW TV Smart Stick. Learn more at nowtv.com
